We are always up for a challenge, and new ways of interpreting archaeology in the community. One of our recent projects has brought together archaeological expertise and artistic endeavour. Lorraine Mepham has been collaborating with established artist Syann van Niftrik and Dorset potter Jonathan Garratt. Jonathan is one of the last potters in Europe to fire pots made of hand-dug clay in a wood-fired kiln; he built his own kiln at Hare Lane in Dorset in 1986, and recently moved to Shaftesbury. Syann is primarily an experimental jeweller, but said that “the idea and shape of this project came from my own thoughts on the changing meaning of objects in time. The plan was to have a potter make a vessel and while doing so, tell me what is going on in his mind. And then have an archaeologist talk about the thoughts that come up while piecing together sherds in order to ascertain what they were a part of. I thought it might be interesting to see what connections there may be in the two processes.” The project featured a pot made by Jonathan, which was deliberately broken, and then reassembled by Lorraine. Syann inscribed some of Jonathan’s comments on making the pot on the inside surface before it was fired, and wrote some of Lorraine’s thoughts on the outside after it had been reassembled. The whole process has been documented by film-maker Zan Barberton. Both pot and film feature in the exhibition ‘Re-Making the Past’, along with other artists who have been inspired by the ancient past. The exhibition runs at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen in Bovey Tracey until 10 May 2015, touring to the Craft Study Centre at Farnham from 9 - 18 July 2015. By Lorraine Mepham, Senior Post-excavation Manager

Archaeologists working in Guatemala have unearthed new information about the Maya civilization’s transition from a mobile, hunter-gatherer lifestyle to a sedentary way of life.

Led by University of Arizona archaeologists Takeshi Inomata and Daniela Triadan, the team’s excavations of the ancient Maya lowlands site of Ceibal suggest that as the society transitioned from a heavy reliance on foraging to farming, mobile communities and settled groups co-existed and may have come together to collaborate on construction projects and participate in public ceremonies.

The findings, to be published this week in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, challenge two common assumptions: that mobile and sedentary groups maintained separate communities, and that public buildings were constructed only after a society had fully put down roots.

“There has been the theory that sedentary and mobile groups co-existed in various parts of the world, but most people thought the sedentary and mobile communities were separate, even though they were in relatively close areas,” said Inomata, a UA professor of anthropology and lead author of the PNAS study. “Our study presents the first relatively concrete evidence that mobile and sedentary people came together to build a ceremonial center.”

A public plaza uncovered at Ceibal dates to about 950 B.C., with surrounding ceremonial buildings growing to monumental sizes by about 800 B.C. Yet, evidence of permanent residential dwellings in the area during that time is scarce. Most people were still living a traditional hunter-gatherer-like lifestyle, moving from place to place throughout the rainforest, as they would continue to do for five or six more centuries.

The area’s few permanent residents could not have built the plaza alone, Inomata said.

“The construction of ceremonial buildings is pretty substantial, so there had to be more people working on that construction,” he said.

Inomata and his colleagues theorize that groups with varying degrees of mobility came together to construct the buildings and to participate in public ceremonies over the next several hundred years. That process likely helped them to bond socially and eventually make the transition to a fully sedentary society.

“This tells us something about the importance of ritual and construction. People tend to think that you have a developed society and then building comes. I think in many cases it’s the other way around,” Inomata said.

“For those people living the traditional way of life, ceremony, ritual and construction became major forces for them to adapt a new way of life and build a new society. The process of gathering for ritual and gathering for construction helped bring together different people who were doing different things, and eventually that contributed to the later development of Mayan civilization.”

The transition was gradual, with the Maya making the shift to a fully sedentary agrarian society, reliant on maize, by about 400 or 300 B.C., Inomata said.

“The most fascinating finding is that different peoples with diverse ways of life co-existed in apparent harmony for generations before establishing a more uniform society,” said Melissa Burham, a study co-author and a graduate student in the UA School of Anthropology. “Discovering an ancient ‘melting pot’ is definitely the unexpected highlight of this research.”

A team from Wessex Archaeology has entered the Trailwalker 2015 to raise money for Oxfam and the Gurkha Welfare Trust. From our South Office David Norcott, Patrick Dresch, and Susan Clelland have signed up to walk 100 km of the South Downs Way in one continuous no-sleep push over 30 hours, setting off early on Saturday 25 July and not stopping until the afternoon of Sunday 26. Sad news from our London & South East Office is that event organiser Kent Jones has suffered an injury preventing him from taking part. All is not lost though as Mark Williams has agreed to step in and Kent Jones has agreed to take on the daunting task of getting Mark into shape for the event! Please consider sponsoring us in this gruelling challenge! By following this link https://www.justgiving.com/Wessex-Archaeology